Full tallies are completed – though not first counts yet – in both Galway West and Dublin Central and it seems that the early pictures that began to take shape once the boxes were opened in these two byelections have largely firmed up.Nobody now believes that anyone other than Daniel Ennis of the Social Democrats will win in Dublin, probably after topping the poll on the first count. It is expected that his superior ability to attract transfers will secure him a comfortable victory over his Sinn Féin rival Janice Boylan. The wave of support for Gerry Hutch, the veteran criminal and Independent candidate in Dublin, that some of the parties had feared in recent days has not materialised. Instead, anti-migration Independent Malachy Steenson has performed stronger than expected, taking some of those votes Hutch had targeted.In Galway West, the picture is less definitive at this stage, though the full tally suggests that while the Labour Party’s Helen Ogbu will emerge as the leading candidate of the left – and therefore should benefit strongly from left-wing transfers, especially among city voters – she will be too far behind the two front-runners: Fine Gael’s Seán Kyne and Independent Ireland’s Noel Thomas. It’s too soon to say definitively which of these two candidates will take the seat, but all the advantage seems to lie with Kyne. Ogbu’s transfers may end up being decisive, and it’s hard to see them favouring Thomas over the Fine Gael candidate. But there’s a lot of votes to be counted before we get there.What would these results mean if they are borne out in the counts to come?First, the winners. It has been a very good day for the Social Democrats who confirm the momentum that the party has generated since the last general election in 2024. It’s hard to see the party holding two seats in Dublin Central at the general election and so perhaps a European run might beckon for the party’s TD in the constituency Gary Gannon, but that is for another day. For now, the party can bask in the success in the capital and make plan for further gains in the future.[ Live coverage of the Dublin Central byelection countOpens in new window ][ Live coverage of the Galway West byelection countOpens in new window ]There is very often a party that catches voters’ imaginations and enjoys an electoral wave. If that is going to happen at the next general election, then the Social Democrats stand a better chance than anyone else of riding it.It has been a good day also for Fine Gael and its leader. Kyne’s election is not yet done and dusted in the way that Ennis’s seems to be but he has outperformed the pre-election expectations and given his leader Simon Harris, who was campaigning hard in Galway in the last 10 days, a timely boost. Even in Dublin, while the vote for the party’s candidate Ray McAdam is a little behind expectations, he has done well enough to put himself in contention for a seat at the next general election. And that was always the game here.The same could be said for Labour’s Ogbu and the Green Party’s Janet Horner in Galway and Dublin respectively, bearing out the first law of Irish elections: it’s about the candidates. If Noel Thomas doesn’t win in Galway, it will be a disappointment to Independent Ireland, who hoped that the fuel protests would carry him home. (They may yet, of course.)But even if Thomas does not win, his strong vote confirms that in many places there will be a viable option to the right of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.In Dublin Central, that option is much farther to the right. Hutch did not perform as well as some had predicted, but Steenson – the anti-establishment, anti-migration, angry-at-lots-of-things candidate – performed better. If today’s patterns are repeated in a general election, Steenson is in with a shot of winning a Dáil seat. Either he or Hutch could take it.Ennis and Kyne in poll position on a bad day for big parties Listen | 33:15There’s plenty of competition among the losers, too. Fianna Fáil’s performance in Dublin Central is abysmal, probably ending up as its worst ever byelection result. The party is moribund in what used to be – a relatively short time ago – one of its citadels. Galway West looks likely to be considerably better, though; the party’s candidate Cillian Keane will be well ahead of rivals in the Social Democrats and the Greens, and ahead of Sinn Féin.And it is Mary Lou McDonald who looks likely to have the most miserable day of all the leaders. She has conceded in Galway at lunchtime that it isn’t Sinn Féin’s day, dismissing suggestions of pressure on her leadership by remarking that “pressure is for tyres”. But it’s also for party leaders that don’t deliver election victories.[ Who would want the most difficult job in Ireland? Quite a few peopleOpens in new window ]The Dublin Central loss – in her own constituency – is especially worrying for the party. It shows how Sinn Féin is being squeezed on one side by the soft left in the Social Democrats and on the other by the new right in Steenson and Hutch. It is not clear that McDonald has an answer to this.